[henshao]

back of envelope:

450k man hours = 225 people full time, 1 year @ ~ 70k a year = 15m

They added 34 more suites * 2 people * $1000 per person per cruise week = 78000 more per trip

~200 trips to pay back the cost - not sure what the utilization of cruise ships is usually, but if they do 40 packed cruises a year, they're at a ~5 year ROI.

I guess I forgot the cost of the new section itself, but I'm going to guess all in, < 10 years ROI?

[throwaway201606]

The ship is a luxury cruise liner: the article, somewhere close to the bottom, says "Pricing for the 7-day cruise starts at $5,600 per person"

that 'starts" in the last part is kinda-important ... I took a look and they have 1 week cruises for $22,000

So, its really more like

34 more suites * 2 people * $5600 per person per cruise week = $380,000 more per trip at the low end

34 more suites * 2 people * $22000 per person per cruise week which is just over $1.4M more per trip at the high end

Assuming $15M from the 450k man-hours and $23M in materials for the retro-fit, (seriously over-estimating materials because I want the nice easy math that goes with a $38M total), it would be:

- 100 cruise-weeks or about 2 years to re-coup at the low end

- ~30 cruises (not cruise weeks, literally cruises ) to re-coup at the high end

[CoastalCoder]

Don't forget the opportunity cost of the ship being out of commission during that work.

[ansible]

Though it is quite possible the ship was due for refit anyway.

[alexpotato]

They key thing here would be to factor in all of the costs for a new ship e.g.

- Design time

- building time

- "fit and finish" time etc

- cost for all of the above

It's very possible the cost (or even ROI) would be larger(longer) than your calculations.

[resonantjacket5]

I think it was more of they were already going to refurbish the ship. I doubt extending a brand new ship would make any sense.

[khc]

if you have more passengers, you will also have more cost to service these passengers per trip.